The inventive concept relates generally to electronic memory technologies. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to nonvolatile memory devices and related programming methods capable of providing reduced power consumption.
There is an ever increasing demand for nonvolatile memory devices having higher storage capacity and faster performance. There is also a continuing need to limit power consumption for various reasons, such as temperature regulation, energy cost, limited battery life of some devices, and others.
Most nonvolatile memory devices exhibit a general tradeoff between storage capacity and/or performance and power consumption. In other words, as storage capacity and/or performance increases, power consumption tends to increase accordingly. As a result, researchers are engaged in continuing efforts to reduce or minimize power consumption in nonvolatile memory devices, especially those on the leading edge of storage capacity and performance.